A real urban vegetable garden, growing between desks and corridors. In the offices of Pasona, in Tokyo, productivity improves in just this way — by growing crops alongside colleagues.
It is the largest company vegetable garden in all of Japan. 4,000 square metres out of the building's total 20, dedicated to growing more than 200 plant species, many of them edible. There are rice paddies, clusters of tomatoes hanging from the ceiling, and fully fledged indoor greenhouses of broccoli, lettuce and many other vegetables.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6k-cfxr2CnM
This is happening in the offices of Pasona, a company specialising in human resources, located in one of the central districts of Tokyo. From the outside it is immediately apparent: the vertical walls covered in fruit and flowers offer an extremely pleasant sight.
The project, dating from 2010, was designed by the New York studio Kono Design, which redeveloped the entire nine-storey building, transforming it into a giant urban farm. Here, employees — and their families too — can grow the food they put on the table. Once a year, school groups are invited to plant rice and then watch it grow.
The underlying idea is to create an environment where the working day is structured around office hours, yet punctuated by a pleasant distraction. You might find yourself walking past walls of beans, or sitting in a meeting with ripe tomatoes hanging overhead, or watching an orange grow from the ninth-floor window.
This is illustrated by the urbanisation rate of cities such as Tokyo itself. Seventy per cent of the world's population will be living in cities by 2050, which will consequently need to meet a growing demand for food and water.
According to the FAO, urban vegetable gardens — or what is defined as urban farming — will be one of the solutions. Growing food directly in cities, on rooftops, in parks and in offices will mean using less land, fewer transport miles and less packaging. It will also be possible to establish local markets to sell or exchange produce that is genuinely zero-kilometre, or at least grown in the immediate vicinity.
Tending and caring for even one square metre of plants helps people to relax, concentrate and switch off. This is demonstrated by all the large corporate groups that provide employees with dedicated spaces for shared vegetable gardens. Many studies show that even gardening as a hobby alone increases productivity in the office, improves socialisation and employee wellbeing. Pasona's offices are proof of that.